Like Falling
by Antiquixotic
Summary: In the search for truth, House wasn't the only one prepared to be reckless.


**Like Falling**

by Antiquixotic

_**AN: **__This was originally written for a Camp Sick!Wilson 'Got a Minute?' challenge (#27). The original thread can be found at sick-wilson dot livejournal dot com slash 431028 dot html._

_This fic takes place a day or so after 'Out of the Chute,' so there're minor spoilers for that episode._

* * *

><p>It seemed to take forever for the pills to kick in, but when they did, they hit him like a freight train.<p>

He watched television for a while, feeling giggly and nine feet tall, before eventually finding himself curled up in the recovery position on the couch, a puddle of drool forming in the hollow space between his cheek and the leather cushion. His stomach rolled with an uneasy nausea, but with the narcotics pulling apart his reason and screwing with the dial of the universe (twisting until the colors were too sharp, the edges of the furnishings rendered fuzzy and indistinct) he found he didn't mind so much. With his head bobbing and floating among the rafters, tethered only by the lead pulling down his limbs, he couldn't grasp much of anything beyond the passage of each brittle, stained-glass moment.

Incontrovertibly, irredeemably _high._

The beds of his fingernails were taking on a blue tinge, a small, persistently rational part of him noted. That was a bad sign, not according to plan, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember why it mattered. He was tired, and he felt good and terrible and he just wanted to _sleep-_

Things were dark for a time. And then there came a sudden roar of sound as rough hands grabbed and flipped the world around, followed by the invasive scrape of bony knuckles in the back of his throat, touching right _there_ and bringing up bile and the sad, dissolving corpses of twelve little white beetles, and _Jimmy, don't you __**dare **_while gasping for breath in a circle of arms that shook, and finally, blessedly, nothing at all again.

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><p>The first thing he knew when he opened his eyes was that his throat hurt. The next was that he was strapped to a hospital bed with leather and steel buckle cuffs. He blinked, and yellow walls swam into focus, while the distant shouting of a frightened woman pricked at his ears. <em>Third floor psychiatric ward,<em> he thought blearily. _Suicide watch._

Fuck.

"You selfish, hypocritical son of a bitch."

The unexpected voice was devoid of emotion, so inflectionless that Wilson didn't recognize it at first. He lifted his aching head and squinted at the figure slumped in a plastic chair, which was wedged protectively into one shadowed corner of the room. "You tried to kill yourself with my meds. In my apartment, on my damn _couch._

"Was this your revenge for the balcony?" House's eyes flicked briefly to Wilson's face, before returning to their determined inspection of his shoes. A muscle in his jaw worked furiously as he tapped his cane against the tiles. "Do you hate me that much?"

The bottom dropped out of Wilson's world, and he shook his head, both in denial and to rattle away the fuzziness in his brain. For the first time in over a week, his friend was sober and present, _seeing _him again, but weighted down by an assumption that couldn't be more wrong. Pulling ineffectually at the cuffs, he cleared his throat urgently and wished for water.

"Wasn't... trying to die," he rasped around the splintering in his throat. "Not revenge. God, no."

There was a pause, and then a low sigh, and House levered himself wearily to his feet. He walked to Wilson's bedside, where a small bucket of melting ice chips sweated on the otherwise empty food tray. Hooking a couple with his free hand, he slipped the cold slivers between Wilson's parted lips. The ice melted rapidly in the hot confines of his mouth, liquid sliding down his abused throat like a balm. When he spoke a moment later, trying to catch his friend's housefly gaze, his voice sounded almost human again.

"I wouldn't do that to you, House," he promised solemnly. "I wasn't trying to commit suicide."

House's disbelieving snort was eloquent, but some of the tension seemed to leave him as he returned to his abandoned chair. "Fine. Your explanation better be epic, though, or I'll make sure you stay in those cuffs until your balls are knocking around your knees."

"A charming visual," Wilson said dryly, cuff buckles clinking as he struggled not to squirm. He was still a little blurry at the edges, his thoughts a sluggish march, so he left eloquence behind and staggered gamely towards sincerity. "You told me you were staying at the hotel for another night. I needed to use your apartment, and I needed to be alone, so I figured if I was ever going to do it, it'd have to be then." House finally met his eyes, his gaze obsidian sharp, and so Wilson said again, "_I wasn't trying to die. _I did some research, and I knew the right number to take for my size and metabolism."

"You were cyanotic, idiot. Your research sucks."

Wilson would have argued, pointing out that depressed breathing doesn't always progress to the absence thereof, and that he mostly likely would've made it through the night alone. But then he remembered the scrape of knuckles against his teeth and the hoarse sound of his name in his ear, and he forcibly bit back any protest. Turning his head to stare at one eye-wateringly yellow wall, he said instead, "I just wanted to- to get close. To see the edge, without falling over."

"That's... about eight different kinds of messed up. Aside from taking years off my life, what purpose could that have possibly served?"

"Five times," came the bitter non sequitor. Wilson could almost feel the other's speculative gaze on his skin; twin points of pain pressing against his temple. "That's how often you've overdosed on one type of painkiller or another. I peeled you off the floor for the first three of those occasions, and you still went back for more. Like you enjoyed the ride.

"You've been off the vicodin for a long time now, and you've been doing so well. I thought it was over, finally, but then this _thing _with Cuddy happened, and-" Wilson sighed and thumped his head against the too soft pillow. He felt tongue-tied and aching, older than he had any right to be. "I don't blame you, House. I know why you did it, but the fact is that you're using again, and it's only a matter of time now before you go too far."

House's mouth was a thin, bloodless line, his upper body hunched over his cane like a gargoyle. The muscle in his jaw was jumping continuously, and he seemed to be holding off a tirade by effort of will alone. Wilson opened his hand as if to reach out to him, but the cuffs rattled, drawing him up short, and the urge died away.

"It's just- I keep _losing _you to them. To your damn little pills. I had to know what the attraction is, why you keep insisting on-" House's expression had closed down progressively, and Wilson seemed to give up. Smiling weakly, he finished, "Just once, I needed to know what it was like to be on the floor."

"And now you do," House said, voice frozen and grim.

"Yeah." Wilson closed his eyes, exhaustion beginning to pull him down into a still, hopefully dreamless sleep. "It was like falling backwards. Forever."


End file.
